Hedge funds focused on wealth preservation and European opportunities in 2014

Wealth preservation is foremost in the minds of hedge fund managers in 2014 as well as opportunities in Europe, said Hansjoerg Borutta, group CIO of Zurich-based wealth management service provider Marcuard Heritage in the latest Opalesque Roundtable in Zurich.

"When a year with good market performance comes to an end, every investor's number one goal is to protect the gains made," he said and added, "In fact, the market performance this year was better than anticipated. 2012 was a pretty worrisome year with a lot of tail risks. 2013 was easier, but not really easy. As we are wealth preservation oriented, we did not invest at full throttle in the markets. Our asset allocation varied through the year and we took some money off the table when we achieved certain performance goals or we felt that it was necessary. It is no secret that there are still a lot of issues with respect to the real economy and the financial markets. So we are not following the current equity rally happily and blindly."

But because hedge fund managers have wealth preservation foremost in their minds, Borutta continued, they are always eager to be prepared for the worst case. Fortunately, most of them do not think that most of the tail risks they anticipate are imminent at present.